The telephoto lens is a great help in taking the more timid subjects. Audubon used a telescope to get the most familiar glimpses of these little inhabitants of the forests long before the dry plate was invented. What would he not have given to have been the possessor of a means of taking instantly all the details and attitudes of the wild birds he loved so well! The camera is now adding daily to the accurate knowledge we possess of the things of nature, and every young person should own one and become familiar with its rare qualities and usefulness. It is very gratifying to think that sport in the woods now means something superior to the old bloody work our boys formerly pursued with guns. With a copy of the book above mentioned a boy is equipped with suggestions and directions enough to keep him busy and well employed for several seasons. MOLE CRICKET LODGE. BERTHA SEAVEY SAUNIER. Mr. and Mrs. Mole Cricket had folded their hands for the winter. The busy season was over, for the ground was all hard with the foot tread of Jack Frost and the snow lay all over the lodge--a solid, warm cover that squeaked and crunched quite musically when little Boy Will rode back and forth on it with his sled Dasher. Shadows lay rather heavily in the lodge. The caverns and galleries which had been built in warmer times were hung with darkness and all was still in slumber. Side by side in the chamber, just under the long, dead grass and the white snow, with a roof formed of tiny roots and loose earth, lay Mr. and Mrs. Mole Cricket. It was the same chamber in which had lain the little white eggs that the warm sun had hatched, and from it the young crickets had gone out, already valiant, to burrow their own galleries, and seek their own food. Slumber had gone on in the chamber for many weeks when, at a sudden sound, Mr. Cricket moved. We fancy he was cross at being disturbed. "What's that?" he said. "Boy Will," answered his wife. "He's digging up the snow to make a snow man, and shouting." "He'll make us cold," grumbled Mr. Cricket. "Then we must go to the cavern." "But we can't--I'm as stiff as a stick." "I believe I am, too." The earth that covered their roof was very sandy and loose, when not frozen, and as it was, it yielded readily to persistent thumps such as now fell about it. The snow was soggy--just right for building purposes--and Boy Will, in his enthusiasm, scraped up a shovelful of dirt with the last bit of snow that covered the lodge. His sharp eyes saw something black lying beneath the little dead roots that had in the summer belonged to his forget-me-nots. He took the shovel--it was his mother's stove shovel--and carefully pried the dark bundle up, and with his little red fingers separated it from its wrappings.